In Rain
by BecauseHeroesNeverDie
Summary: Ran waits for no one at an old stop sign day after day and contemplates the worth of such symbolic action. -oneshot-


A day.

It's all the little things added up that make Ran realize how lonely she is.

She stands in the rain, rubbing at her numb hands and trying not to lose hold of her umbrella. The wind whips and whistles like he dad staggering through the streets on Friday nights. Some of those girls he hits on are her age. She sticks her tongue out at no one and tries to shake off the nervous pit forming in her stomach. She listens to the rain plod heavily against her thin umbrella, all lace and floral print stretched past its limit on bird bone wires. She wishes they made stronger things with lace.

The rain is soaking her sneakers and she stares down as the drops fling themselves into the ground, into each other. She lets the rest of the world blur and watches the tiny ripples. She taps her foot into the puddle and makes her mark for a few seconds. Her eyes refocus and her world is more than water.

She feels like she is waiting for something, but none of the office ladies click-clacking around the corner have the answer.

Is she waiting for him?

If there is a place for waiting, then perhaps this is it.

This was the spot they had always met up at before walking to school together. She's standing were she had always stood, acting as if things are the same as they were, as if it hadn't been ages since she's last seen him. As if he would just turn the corner and wave at her, grinning sheepishly and yelling out some half-formed apology for being "sorta late."

She closes her eyes and, for a moment, she is angry. The anxious pit in her stomach rises and burns up in her chest. She feels the handle of her umbrella crack.

No. She takes a deep breath of the rain-sweetened air. She imagines all the toxins in her heart being pushed out with the carbon dioxide. She is so much more tired than angry nowadays.

She doesn't want to be here anymore. She's sick of drama, sick of running around, sick sick sick to her stomach of waiting for someone else to dig her out of the muddy water she pretends she isn't drowning in. He wouldn't come in the rain. Life is not some romance drama on Fuji Tv.

Another day.

She stands at the stop sign and stares down the corner made by the straight rows of bland buildings coming together so sharply it seems to hurt just to look.

He thinks he lives in a world made of perfect lines and right angles. A world where an emotion is as inconsequential as a grain of sand, built up of a truth that only the mind could know, detached from all inconvenient stirrings of the heart. It's stupid. She prefers her world of blurry lines and colors to the black and white squares he boxed himself into.

The wind thrashes the cherry trees and the blossoms are torn from sopping branches into the air. To be free for one beautiful moment before being stepped on, rolled over, ground into nothing. She makes her daily pilgrimage to the stop sign. She closes her eyes and folds her hands. She prays, if only for a moment. Praying that time will scoop up every fallen petal and with gentle hands, place them back in their homes. Praying that tomorrow will end and the tomorrow after that will end and that somehow she will be away, away from everybody and living her own life.

She is startled by a softness brushing against her folded hands. A petal has landed in her hands.

"Do I get a wish?" Ran whispers to herself and to the petal. She thinks of her parents and Shinichi and all the sad people who end up in her father's office. She thinks about making a wish for them.

She isn't able to come up with anything.

A yesterday.

He sauntered around the corner, his bag flung lazily over one shoulder. He smiled at her and shouted something like: "What are you doing over there? Can't you walk across the street or do you just want me to walk more than I already have to?"

"That's the plan. I live to make you miserable. How come it took you so long to figure it out, Mr. Detective?" She shouted back, laughing.

"It's not like I've known you my whole life, right?" He crossed the street, jumping in between the cars waiting for the light to change, nonchalantly waving off fists shaking with pent up rage caused by the fact that a tiny light bulb wouldn't glow the right color. It was likely that they were the same people each day. He was a habitual jaywalker. "We just met yesterday, remember?"

"Of course. It just feels like years." She replied, trying not to laugh at such a stupid joke. They'd known each other forever. In fact, it was getting hard to think of a day when he hadn't met her at the stop sign just off her father's apartment.

He walked beside her, talking away, his words rising like smoke and curling around them. Warmth that faded before it got too far away.

She didn't mind that he never stopped talking so much. She loved nothing more than the sound of footsteps beside her, she decided as they plod toward school, surrounded by the rhythmic pounding of a thousand students.

She stopped midstep and looked over at him.

"Hey, if you heard footsteps, could you tell it was me?" She asked, wishing she hadn't been up so late doing homework last night. She was tired and he'd probably think she was stupid.

"Absolutely," he replied, diving into a detailed description of how the sound of footsteps differed between individuals.

That's sad, because I would never know if it was you.

"Now, you've got heavy steps but they're careful. There's a few heavy thuds, then you try to be quieter and they get lighter. I think you could be very stealthy if you were determined to."

Every day.

"I've never been better. Really," she would insist if anyone asked. All her practice is paying off. She's a champion, a fighter and she can take care of herself. It's easy. Ever since her parents had separated, she's been taking care of herself.

It's been a long time.

Every day at school she sits at the same chair in the same desk. She knows this because there is a wad of dull pink bubble gum dried to the back leg on the left side, where leg and seat come together. Her fingers brush it every day, as she sits down, as the bell shrills in her ears. She sits down and stares at the empty chair beside her. It is simply too empty not to look at. Some days she wants sit there herself, just so it won't be so empty.

She knows the teachers hate it when students break away from the seating arrangements.

Some days she just can't focus, mind racing in circles. Time to tell her dad to bet on Ran's Brain, the World's Fastest Horse. Her pencil taps against the desk rhythmically, stopping only when the teacher shouts for her to stop.

The bell rings and school is over.

He is not there and she both cares very much and does not care at all.

A string of days and months. A year.

She stands under the stop sign, watching the corner. School starts in an hour. In an hour the whole world will come to life and rush outside and stuff itself into taxi cabs and subway trains, scrambling to get to the same place as yesterday. She is already in the same place she was yesterday.

The wind is cold now, the wind is warm now, the wind is now. She shakes and sneezes, but she doesn't move. She stares at the corner, wondering what she was waiting for.

It's not him.

Tomorrow?

It is raining again and she is standing under the stop sign. She bought a new umbrella at a convenience store, a plain red one. She spent an evening sewing lace on the edges as her father and Conan watched television. She would look up once in a while and smile at the hapless heroines. She hopes they'll be happy someday.

She thinks that she is different now. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, she will be strong enough to give up on the people who won't stop letting her down. Sonoko is right. People expect her to do everything for them and she is dead tired.

She puts a hand to her lips, and then lays it on the old sign. She turns and she walks away. Rain, air, and the struggling rays of sunlight take her place. Maybe they'll be there long enough to wave at him when he comes back. If.

Her steps are heavy, careful. And they are loud.

_Writers woes: This is loosely based off of a draft I wrote in 2011 that I found on the old family computer. I sort of improvised over it and changed stuff. There are still some parts from the original. It was a surreal experience. I feel like I've changed a lot as a writer and it was fun to give this a shot. Might mess with some more old drafts just to see what happens._


End file.
